By Holly Jo Martin
The makers of the movie Gosnell deliver a horrifying suspense movie that just happens to be true. At first it seems like it is a movie about a pill mill being run in an abortion clinic in Philadelphia. The movie is fast paced and exciting before it turns into something far more disturbing. It is like a car wreck that you can’t help looking at as you drive by. You don’t want to see anything horrible but you can’t stop looking to see if you can piece together what happened.
I drove 3 hours one way to watch the Gosnell movie on opening weekend. This is a true crime story that was billed as “Americas most prolific serial killer.” I was thrilled to see the theater fill up for this top-notch independent film. The whole audience even stayed glued to their seats during the ending credits and until the house lights went up, which is very rare. It was evident we had just experienced something together that was causing us to feel deeply.
The movie makers, Ann McElhinney and Phelim McAleer, do a great job telling the gruesome details of Gosnell’s illegal abortion practices while still keeping the real victims’ dignity intact. There are no disturbing photos of the babies in the film, but they share a website at the end where you can go see the actual photos if you want (my sister did). I did not; I have already seen those photos and you only need to see them once. In the movie, they show us the reaction of the jury as they look at the pictures of the babies. Their reactions are enough to know that what they are seeing is not right.
After watching this movie, reading the book, and learning more about abortion for myself, I feel strongly that abortion needs to stop. The most thought-provoking part of the movie for me was watching the testimony of an expert medical doctor, who had performed over 30,000 abortions in her career, explain the procedures followed in her clinic. To learn what is normal and legal in abortion is truly shocking for those of us who believe the fetus is human with feelings, sensations, and capable of experiencing pain and suffering.
Abortion is out of control and is being used far too liberally. It is not only being used for the women’s and baby’s health risk or for rape victims (as it was first sold to the American public). The law and practice of abortion is being grossly misused as witnessed to the fact we have aborted over 50 million babies since 1973. How can people keep making the same poor life choices?
We can make a difference in these numbers only when the pro-life people become more educated on the actual practice of abortion and how it has become distorted due to a lack of regulations and inspections. A movie like Gosnell exposes the oversights by government agencies which allows it to become a horrific, inhumane practice. Once pro-life individuals can look at the disintegration of abortion we can ask our pro-choice friends and families to look at it too. We cannot expect them to vote for change about abortion if they do not truly understand it. They will not understand it until they look at it. And they won’t look at it unless we do first. We have to be the example and pave the way.
One of the main lessons I have learned from studying abortion is how important it is for Americans to understand the laws and policies that govern this land. There was a law in Philadelphia that no abortion should be performed after the 24th week. This law was not enforced. In Gosnell’s clinic, many full-term births were performed and the babies murdered by snipping the back of their necks. This was murder plain and simple. Without an understanding of the laws, how can we change those laws and policies that are not good? We can’t. We need to educate ourselves so we can advocate more successfully. We can make change together and seeing this movie is a great start.